first, but the last comes home to my inmost soul, 'as the sparks fly upward!'" He looked up as he spoke, as though tracing the flight of the sparks.

"If you sigh like that," said I, pettishly, "you'll blow the candles out, and then there'll be no sparks to go up."

My father made no rejoinder, and we both ate in silence for some minutes. But at that period of my life I had no talent whatever pour le silence; I would rather have harangued a cod's head than hold my peace. I began again.

"Dad."

"Well."

"Please to listen. I'm going to tell you something; come down from the clouds, or up from the pit, wherever you are."

"I'm all attention."

"Well," said I, narratively, "you must know that I found you so dull and unsociable this evening, that I betook myself to the churchyard!"

"Did you find anybody, I should rather say any of the bodies, particularly sociable there?"

"I rather like dead people's company, pa; they don't contradict one, and one